Time: Chronos & Kairos

My husband Dan walks every morning, and on his way he finds things and brings them home for me to wonder about.  Look at this one!

I find our world to be so fascinating and intricate….and abundant!  Here is another caterpillar found along the paths of Arden Hills, right here in our backyard.  Can you believe it?

Or this next one found in July in the lilacs.  He’s really big.

Or this latest one found this September.  I had to get out the macro lens and try to capture his radiating tufts.  Isn’t he wonderful?

He brought me this one while I was knitting on the deck in the warm fall sun, so I had some fun watching him crawl up a stand of wool.

These little guys make me think about time & change.  Maybe because its fall when they appear and it’s time to move out of the lazy days of summer into the structure of starting anew in the fall.  Time can be measured in seconds, hours and years. We know that there are seasons, and we look forward to them, or mourn their passing.  We say there is nothing more constant than change and usually refer to the flow of time in a linear sense.  We think of this kind of time as duration.  In Greek the word is Chronos.

But the type of change this little guy made me think of was the quality of change.  In the right time he will change. His change will encompass a great distance, from an earth bound crawler to one floating on breezes. The quality of his life will be forever changed.  In this sense, something happens to you within time and there is a fundamental change.  This is kairos.  For a season, this creature could only crawl on land.  For another season, it will take wing and experience an altogether different perspective.  He will go from crunching arcs in leaf edges, to sipping sweet drops of flower nectar.

I ask myself some questions.

-Do I spend all my ‘time’ linearly, just getting through the day or the month, or do I allow myself the time to change in quality?

-How can I use my time so I don’t miss the opportunity to grow and learn and become the person God wants me to be?

-How can I use the season I am in to prepare for the next?

Ecclesiastes 3

A Time for Everything

¹ There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:

² a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
³ a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
⁴ a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
⁵ a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
⁶ a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
⁷ a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
⁸ a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

Do you have any thoughts?  I’d love to hear what season you’re in right now, so feel free to share!  Or maybe you’ve just come through a hard season and you can look back and see how God’s hand was there, even if it wasn’t apparent at the time.

In Faith & Wonder,

Laurie

{images: Laurie Ashbach}